


Things Lost in the Pillars of Light

by idanato



Series: The Darkest Mage Timeline [8]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Agarthan worldbuilding, Angst and Feels, F/M, Fake Marriage, Post-Canon, Sad, Shambhala, Spies, Torture, Unplanned Pregnancy, pregnancy loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idanato/pseuds/idanato
Summary: Hubert and Mercedes go undercover in Shambhala following the war. Their mission was supposed to be six months; it turned into two years. They build a life together, and then burn it down in an effort to destroy the place once and for all.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz/Hubert von Vestra
Series: The Darkest Mage Timeline [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536886
Comments: 23
Kudos: 64





	1. The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Please see tags for potentially sensitive material

“Do not tell bedtime stories with happily ever afters to your children. It leads to unrealistic expectations. Tell them the truth: life is pain.” - advice from _Family Guide to the Dark Path_

Mercie was reading a book by the artificial blue lighting that ran along all the walls of the city of Shambhala. The ambient light was everywhere, in the halls, in the labs, even here in the personal quarters. It was no replacement for sunshine, but it at least made having to be subterranean sightly better. Her book, _Practical Dark Magic_ , was actually really interesting, albeit a little specific to the trials of underground life. Dark magic was useful for more than killing according to the authors of the book, apparently it could also be used to obliterate stains, speed along landscaping, silence nosy neighbors, and aid in all manner of household chores.

Beside her in bed Hubert was clearly having a nightmare. Unfortunately there was nothing dark magic could do to make sleeping, at least temporary sleeping, any more peaceful. Mercie sighed and put her book mark between the pages and set the tome aside. She had never lost the keen sense of others’ emotions her crest gave her, and she could feel the terror seeping from her sleeping partner. They had come to Shambhala for answers and to figure out how to destroy it. Within their tiny quarters they could be themselves, but outside of this precious small room they were deeply undercover in the heart of the underground Agarthan city. Everyday was terrifying and they each had more than their fair share of bad dreams.

Mercie gently put a hand on Hubert’s chest as he jerked and whimpered from whatever terrible scene was playing out in his mind. She coaxed him awake and watched his bright green eyes fluttering open as he realized where he was. Their bed was perhaps the one single safe place in all of Shambhala. In bed they were Mercie and Hubert, but everywhere else they had to be Mr. and Mrs. Vestra, two serious mid-level dark mages working for the Agarthans and keeping their heads down. Hubert rolled towards her and she shifted her arms to let him curl up to her side.

The marriage, witnessed by no one but the two of them, had begun as their cover. It let them stay together when they arrived in Shambhala even though they were working in different parts of the great underground compound. Yet in being two adults kept in a confined space surrounded by enemies, they had gotten close. So close that the lines of their strictly fake marriage had begun to blur and bend as what was supposed to be half a year stretched into two and a half years under the earth. Hubert’s arm found its way across her and his hand rested on the burgeoning swell of her stomach. Their marriage was fake, but their child growing inside her was incredibly real, as was the love that had made it.

Her first missed menstrual cycle hadn’t been a terrible cause for concern. Her body had trouble adjusting to life in the shadows. Things down here were disorienting, and their sleeping and waking cycles were completely screwed up from a normal day night cycle. The food was not particularly nutritious and both she and Hubert were feeling and looking a little more anemic the longer they stayed. They surfaced as often as they could, but permission to leave was hard to secure. Mercedes was a blood technician, and really only had to leave for sample collection. Hubert had a bit more flexibility as a dark seal engineer, but they didn’t like to leave the other alone for long.

Her second missed cycle had been a tad more worrisome. She had felt a little under the weather, but the two of them were sick all the time. Hubert pretty much had a constant cold, and Mercedes suspected she was allergic to all the mold down here. So it was hard to separate what might be obvious symptoms of pregnancy from the unfortunate consequences of two surface dwellers living deep in the earth. She informed Hubert at the third missed cycle because she was either expecting or had amenorrhea, and neither of those seemed like very good things. Hubert knew a frightful amount about poisons and presented her the option of keeping the pregnancy or quietly removing it. After a long and difficult conversation they had decided that they both wanted to see their child born.

Now their dangerous little secret was getting harder to conceal. Mercedes left hand joined Hubert’s and she resumed reading _Practical Dark Magic_ , flipping forward to the index to see if it said anything about dark magic and children. Perhaps predictably, the Agarthans had not included any information on how to deal with babies. No one was born in Shambhala; every Agarthan started life as boring old human. They youngest age at which the Agarthans would transform someone was nineteen, and even that was relatively rare and only in cases where child assassins had been groomed and trained like Jeritza. Most Agarthans just started out as regular dark mages working their way up for the chance at transformation, which typically happened anywhere from ages thirty to fifty. Their aging slowed after that and their bodies changed as they grayed and grew more powerful. Transformation was like the ultimate promotion in this workplace from hell.

“What was your nightmare about?” asked Mercie as she intertwined her fingers with his.

He was silent for a long while and then he took a deep breath, “We need to get out of here.” _We_ , not the two of them but the three of them.

“The mission isn’t over,” whispered Mercie as she put the book down again. She leaned in to turn towards him so their faces were a little closer. They looked more mature than when they first met. Mercedes was now thirty one, and her face had thinned out a bit and she had some tiny crinkly wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes from when she had learned to smile again. She had let her hair grow out once more, and was feeling just a little closer these days to the person she had been in school. Hubert had a lot of gray hairs for someone who was only twenty eight, especially around his chin in the short dark beard he now kept. He’d kept his hair short following the war, and Mercedes now regularly trimmed it, although he’d let her make his bangs less aggressive. He was much more mellow and subdued these days than the young angry man she’d first met back at Garreg Mach.

“We haven’t learned everything we came to find out,” Mercie reminded him.

“We learned there isn’t a fix for Edelgard and Lysithea,” whispered Hubert.

“Not a fix yet,” started Mercie, ever the optimist. They still had some time to find answers.

“Not a fix ever,” said Hubert. He was still a big pessimist, that would probably never change. There was no cure, at least not that the Agarthans had. Hanneman was supposed to be working with Edelgard and Linhardt was with Lysithea, but so far there had been no breakthroughs. He hugged himself a little closer to her, “We need to finish this and get out of here as soon as possible.”

***

Mercedes’ immediate superior was a relatively newly minted Agarthan that went by the name of Hemia. She had chosen her Agarthan name to reflect her lifelong dedication to blood research. Mercedes referred to her as Hernia when she was feeling especially mean spirited and bitching about her boss to Hubert. Agarthans were not born, they were raised or they were recruited. Hemia had come to Shambhala as a young woman following the dark path with a keen interest in medicine. She had worked here for ten years, made a few important discoveries, and had earned herself an artificial crest stone that was now sitting in the space her heart used to be.

Hemia wasn’t quite the pale gray of a seasoned Agarthan, but she was on her way to looking like one with each passing year. Her black hair was always back in a severe bun and she had intense brown eyes that were presently staring at Mercedes.

They were taking tea on their afternoon break while the blood experiment they’d been performing that morning passively coagulated. They were exposing normal human blood to a new type of artificial crest stone to see if it could be used to create temporary demonic beast transformations. Hemia was very frustrated by their progress and could not understand why things were going so poorly. Mercedes quietly sabotaged what she could when she could.

Hemia sipped her tea and let her eyes bore into Mercedes who had self consciously brought her big lab notebook up to cover her stomach. Hemia sighed and got up and with a quick look into the hall, shut the door to the Medical Department lab and returned to her seat, “Give me the notebook.”

Mercedes reluctantly handed over her shield and hoped that Hemia would not notice how the buttons of her white lab coat were pulling slightly over her lower belly. Hemia looked annoyed, “Mrs. Vestra, are you expecting?”

Mercedes found her throat too dry to get any words out. Hemia sighed with disgust, “And you have not taken care of this? What exactly is the hold up?”

Mercedes felt unexpectedly emotional at the idea and bit her lip to stop it from trembling, “My husband and I decided that we would—”

“This isn’t a matter of deciding what to do,” snapped Hemia. “There are reasons it simply is not done.”

“What do you mean?” Mercedes wondered vaguely if she might be kicked out of Shambhala for this. That wouldn’t exactly be a punishment.

Hemia pinched the bridge of her nose. Her tone soften just slightly, “You poor girl, you have no idea do you?”

Mercedes’ throat was tight, “No idea about what?”

Hemia pointed now at Mercedes’ swollen belly, “This should not even be possible, you have a dark seal. Your husband also has a dark seal, assuming that it is his. This is highly irregular, and the only explanation that seems reasonable is that your spawn has inherited your crest, which is protecting it.”

“Protecting it from what?” Mercedes felt like she was going to cry as she put together the implications of what Hemia was saying.

Hemia took a deep breath and looked incredibly vexed, “Your little embryo is currently in a battle with your dark seal. Getting pregnant as a dark mage is incredibly rare, and as far as staying pregnant, well, I’ve never heard of a child of a female dark mage carried to term.” Mercedes composure was breaking at this news, and Hemia sighed at her as if she were explaining something to a moronic child, “You are setting yourself up for a painful failure, my advice is to deal with this while you still can, if you still can. How far along are you?”

“Five months,” whispered Mercedes weakly as she wished she had one of Hubert’s handkerchiefs right now.

“Dear Nemesis, that is too long,” hissed Hemia.

“May I please be excused?” asked Mercedes as panic filled her chest.

“Be back within the hour, we need to finish the experiment,” said Hemia with a dark cloud of disappointment hanging across her unnaturally pale face.

Mercedes mumbled a thanks and quietly hung up her lab coat on the rack before exiting out into the poorly lit hall. Mercedes passed the women’s water closet and briefly considered just locking herself in there and hyperventilating for the next hour, but she pushed forward. She found a stairwell and started to descend until she got to the floor that Hubert worked on: The Department of Technology.

She took lunch with him when their schedules permitted it, so navigating her way through the confusing tech department to find him was second nature at this point. It was filled with machines and rather dangerous looking things. Right now his unit was desolate. Almost everyone from his area was crowding around a small viewing window to watch some sort of demonic beast demonstration going on in the large test areas. Mercedes did her best to ignore it. When someone was caught doing something particularly bad, they were held prisoner and then turned into a demonic beast to carry out a dog fight to the death. Sometimes when things were slow they just caught a few unsuspecting surface dwellers and had them fight instead. Engineers loved betting on these affairs. There wasn’t much in the way of nice entertainment in Shambhala.

Hubert was working alone at his station with all the lights on and his silly magnifying glasses that let him see the tiny little dark seal device he was building. They made his eyes look huge as he looked up with concern as she approached his work area.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he took his glasses off and shut off the desk lamp.

“We need to talk,” she said in a rushed whisper, “Privately.”

Hubert looked alarmed as he got up and led her along down a desolate hallway to a supply closet. He shut the door and the two let their eyes adjust to the dim red of the lighting. They sat on some boxes and Hubert silently held her as Mercedes broke down sobbing. She knew it was the hormones, but a small sliver of herself recalled how she used to cry before getting her dark seal. The bad feelings had never went away, but the tears had almost completely. Now they were back in force.

“Hemia finally asked if I was pregnant,” said Mercedes finally when she could speak again. “She said, she said some terrible things.”

“Did she threaten you?” Hubert’s voice was calm; she recognized his tone, this was Lord Vestra offering to remove Hemia. He enjoyed removing Agarthans and was quite good at not getting caught. He had a lot of practice these days.

“No, she told me that dark seals,” her voice trailed off. Mercedes took a deep breath, she could barely bring herself to think it let alone say it out loud, “She suggested my dark seal was going to kill our baby.”

Hubert held his head in one hand, “We need to get back to the surface. It can’t be good for you down here, we’ll have a better chance up there.” Now he was getting angry, “You need sunlight and fresh air, and real food.”

Mercedes squeezed his hand, “What’s our exit strategy?” If they just walked away without permission they’d be tracked down and killed, and the Agarthans were very good hunters.

“Let me figure that out,” whispered Hubert. “You just focus on staying healthy, and try not use any dark magic.”


	2. The Plan

“To tread the dark path is to elevate the self, _reason_ , over the divine, _faith_. Always believe in yourself, because in the darkness you have only yourself to answer to.” - passage from _Family Guide to the Dark Path_

The food in Shambhala, frankly, sucked. Mercedes was teaching Hubert how to cook whenever they were up on the surface, but down here everyone ate in shifts at the massive cafeteria. The higher ranking Agarthans, things like Thales or Myson, the boss of Hubert’s boss, dined privately and surely on better food. Pencil pushing dark mages like Hubert and Mercedes got to eat their rations on a very tight schedule with absolutely no privacy. Hubert felt eyes on him and Mercedes as they sat together. He could hear the vile whispers, _“It must be her crest keeping it alive_ ” or “ _It can’t be his_ ”. Then there were the bets on when Mercedes would miscarry that put Hubert into a simmering murderous rage. When he first arrived in Shambhala he’d felt conflicted about all the humans that would die if this place fell, but after spending two and half years around hundreds of the most evil hearted dark mages in Fodlan, Hubert was ready to see them all buried.

Hubert pushed some of his food onto Mercedes’ plate. Growing a whole human seemed like hungry work but there would be no adjustment to her rations. Everyone got the same portion, take it or leave it.

If someone had told him in 1180 that in eight years he’d be in a sham marriage with Mercedes von Martritz with whom he was having a child, well, he wouldn’t even have had a sarcastic reply because that would have surely been the craziest thing he’d ever heard. Hell, if he’d been told this in 1186 he would have laughed at such a ridiculous notion, but here they were. She had been the one to start initiating the sex, and he was so beaten down by everything that surrounded them that he hadn’t even hesitated to think through if it was a good idea. They had been told the dark seals made them both sterile, so he hadn’t been very careful.

The truth was that Hubert wanted this more than he was capable of expressing. He wanted to be a father, badly, and this accident was the only good thing to happen to them in Shambhala. Mercedes was even seeming more like Mercie as time passed since the the war and the last time she’d had to kill anyone. Since getting pregnant she’d been glowing with an infectious happiness that Hubert was relieved to see. She only got to express this joy in the confines of their room, but it was like glimpsing Mercedes from before she followed Jeritza and before she got her dark seal. It was a wonderful sight to behold.

Everything else down here was shitty. The Agarthans had spent a century figuring out how to put crests into people, and their success rate was still embarrassingly low. They had no plan or procedure to safely remove a crest. Whenever they did harvest one it was uniformly fatal. There was no telling if someone just couldn’t survive once a crest they’d grown up with was ripped away or if it was the process itself. Either way, he didn’t want to test the hypothesis on Edelgard. The same could be said for dark seals. They could be removed safely, but with each year they were in someone, the harder the withdraw would be. After a decade it was considered fatal to have a dark seal removed. That’s what had killed Jeritza off in the end. His had broken in battle and it wasn’t replaced, and he’d faded away within weeks.

When the pair finished their pathetic meal they walked back to the privacy of their room. When they first arrived in Shambhala they had tried to make friends but it was quickly apparent that everyone living here was utterly terrible. So the Vestras kept to themselves. They checked out library books and read a lot. They sat together and people watched. They definitely fucked too much because Shambhala was boring and trying out every position in their weird library books was exciting.

It was the dark seals fault. Put a pair of seals too close together and they wanted to become one. So as Hubert and Mercie had abstinently shared their small bed to sell their fake marriage both their seals had been warm. Not hot like when killing, feeling shame, or anger. This was a pleasant warmness deep in their cores, and when large swaths of their unclothed skin touched the warmness spread. The feeling of his seal moving beneath his skin had been unsettling at first, but when paired with being deep in Mercie it was a magical connected experience.

However, ever since Hemia had opened her big mouth Hubert had been afraid to be with Mercie. He didn’t want to jostle her too much, and he didn’t want her seal writhing around and feeling warm. He didn’t want to disturb the precious thing fighting to grow inside her. So Hubert was content to spoon her and feel with her the first signs of their baby’s movement within.

“We need to get stuff,” whispered Hubert as he held her.

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t even have blankets, clothes, diapers,” said Hubert as he started to mentally panic at the length of the list of things a baby needed. “She needs a place to sleep.”

“She? You’ve already decided it’s a girl and not a boy?” teased Mercedes.

“Well what I decide doesn’t really matter, but yes, I think it’s a girl,” said Hubert. Of course he wanted it to be a girl! He’d much rather raise an Edelgard or Bernadetta than a Caspar or Linhardt! If he had a son, he’d still love him, but he feared becoming his own father and lecturing all the time.

“Really, well I think it’s a boy,” said Mercie.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the contrarian?” challenged Hubert.

Mercedes rolled to face him and tapped his nose with her finger, “You are a contrarian, and I would not have you any other way.”

“Good because I don’t come in any other way,” grumbled Hubert as he pulled her as close as he could. Even with her belly against him she still seemed so far away. He stared into her eyes; he used to be afraid of doing that in school but now he couldn’t stop, “Well, whatever they are, I hope they’re more like you than me.”

Mercedes hooked her hands around his shirt and brought his face close so she could kiss him. “I think you’re being unfair to yourself; why wouldn’t you want your child to be as loyal and ruthlessly creative as you?”

“Fine, hopefully they’re just the best parts of us,” whispered Hubert. “Your kindness, and big heart, and my dashing good looks.”

Mercedes rolled her eyes and then ran her fingers through his beard, “You’re like wine, no good when too young, but much better with age.”

Hubert did his best impression of a pout, which admittedly was not very good, “You mean you weren’t completely in love with me in school? It was the hair wasn’t it—”

“I believe it was the fascination with knives and the murdery eyes,” said Mercedes.

“Neither of those things have changed,” protested Hubert as he pushed his hair out of his face so she could see his eyes fully. They were still as murderous as ever.

“You’re right, I’m the one that’s changed,” she said with a laugh. She had changed, a lot, and not all her changes were good. She had been exceptionally brutal during the war and not always very pleasant to be around, but he loved her and she loved him. They took care of each other down here, and when their baby came they would take excellent care of _her_ too.

***

Office life had its ups and downs. Unlike on the surface, everyone down here loved copious amounts of coffee. There was still tea, but that tended to be derided as a lady drink. Hubert did not fit in well with the male office culture. He didn’t enjoy watching the torture games, so he could never contribute to discussions about sports. He was one of the only men who was married so Hubert was the butt of many jokes for being in a monogamous relationship instead of attending the regularly scheduled orgies. He knew his coworkers didn’t like him, but the feelings were mutual.

His boss, as it turned out, was also Kronya’s father. That had come up almost right away when Crompton had hired Hubert and reviewed his resume.

“You know the only reason you’re getting this position is because of special recommendation from Thales,” sighed Crompton. “Your war record is, well, very impressive, but what do you know about tech?”

Hubert really wanted to work in the technology department and not the military branch. The tech department made the weapons, they understood how they worked. The military branch just used the weapons to kill. Hubert wanted the mechanical understanding needed to dismantle them safely. “I’m a quick study, I was one of the top reason mages in my class at Garreg Mach.” Realistically Lysithea was the top of the class, and Hubert knew he was a distant second behind her.

“Oh Garreg Mach, you must have met my daughter Kronya,” said Crompton fondly.

Hubert had frozen up and really hoped that Kronya wasn’t writing letters home to Shambhala about her boyfriend Hubie. “Yes I’m familiar with Kronya, I’m, uh, sorry about what happened—” He was so not sorry, he had tried to kill her by pushing her out of the goddess tower. Unfortunately, Agarthans were super human in their abilities and Kronya had annoyingly landed on her feet and then tried to kill him. It was not a good night.

“Oh I knew when I sent her there that she would be sacrificed,” said Crompton with a dismissive wave of his hand. He turned a picture around on his desk of a lot of young looking Agarthans smiling and waving. Hubert was fascinated by this photography as they called it; he wanted it for surveillance because it was so much quicker and accurate compared to his father’s methods of sketching everything out.

“Did she know she was going to be used in that spell?” Based on seeing Solon rip Kronya’s heart out, Hubert doubted she was in on the plan. Spell development was the other department Hubert was most interested in but apparently it took years to make any progress there. He didn’t have years, he wanted to get out as quickly as possible.

“Oh Nemesis no!” chuckled Crompton. He turned the picture around, “My wife and I enjoy raising children, their minds are so malleable, but whenever you raise a child to get turned as a teenager, well they’re going to be soldiers and assassins. That’s why we call them expendables, not to their faces, of course, but you know, that’s what they are. That’s why they’re interns and not full time employees!”

Two and half years following that hiring meeting, Hubert was excelling as an engineer, but he was also stealing as much as he reasonably could from the office and smuggling it to the surface. He took all manner of things -- library books, blood samples, patents, blueprints, dark seals, fake crest stones -- and would carefully package them away. Then he would do the dangerous path of warps to the Ordelia residence, visit with Lysithea and Felix briefly, take a much needed nap in a spare bedroom, and then warp his way back to Mercedes. He’d often smuggle stuff back with him for her, usually food or teas, to make life more bearable down here.

So whenever Crompton called Hubert into his office, Hubert was sure the jig was up and he was going to be interrogated. Today was no different. Hubert had completely stolen a camera, film and all the chemicals needed to develop pictures, which was perhaps his most daring heist so far, and he was sure this was it.

“Close the door behind you,” instructed Crompton.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck,_ echoed Hubert’s brain as he shut the door and took his seat. Crompton pulled up the device that Hubert had been working on and could not hide his smile, “Vestra, this is excellent!”

Hubert recovered from the shock of not being caught and nodded, “Thank you.”

It was a cuff powered by a chunk of dark seal material that when turned on sent electrical impulses to the wrist and caused the nerves of the hand to lock up the fingers with a muscle spasm. It was intended a mechanism for shackling a mage in a way that they could not cast. Crompton looked delighted, “This was apparently very painful to our test subjects, excellent work.”

“Yes, I tested it on myself first,” said Hubert. It was definitely not a pleasant device.

“Of course you tested it on yourself,” Crompton shook his head while laughing, “You are exactly the crazy bastard everyone who was in the war said you are.”

Hubert was silent at what appeared to be a compliment. Crompton put down the magic shackles and got to business, “You have proved me completely wrong. I thought you were going to be another forced hire that toiled away at the same project for years with no progress, but I’ve literally run out of promotions to give you. So, as much as it pains me to lose you, I’d like to promote you up to working for Myson.”

Weapons development. Hubert took a deep breath, “Thank you sir, that’s a big honor.”

“Are there any projects you’re interested in? Maybe the golems—”

Hubert was keenly interested in the giant mechanized dolls but he was on a mission, “Actually sir, would it be possible to be assigned to the Pillars of Light?”

“Oh those old things! Why do you want to work with those?”

“I was in Arianrhod,” said Hubert.

“You survived Arianrhod! You must tell me about what it was like,” said Crompton. He was on the edge of his seat with excitement.

It had been utterly horrible, but Hubert knew that was not what Crompton wanted to hear. So he focused on the technical descriptions, the shock wave, the fire, the impressions of people on the side of buildings that had been disintegrated. Crompton was enthralled. “Do you want to see the control panel?”

Hubert wished he had his stolen camera with him. “Yes sir, I would love to understand how they work.”

Crompton wagged a finger, “I’ll try to find you a manual or something, but come on, the control panel is down the hall.”

Hubert tried not to shake with anticipate as Crompton gleefully led the way. The room was locked and had a posted guard but Hubert noted it was not even warded against warps. The security was truly pathetic. The guard let them through and Hubert was met with a giant control panel. There was a big grid and dials for positioning a target.

Hubert studied the map of Fodlan that had been adhered to the grid and Crompton looked at it sheepishly. “We had to make that after we bombed Arianrhod instead of Fort Merceus, what a headache that was. You’d think the operators could follow basic coordinates but, well, they’re button pushers not thinkers.”

Hubert paled as he considered the catastrophic loss of life had been caused by operator error. Fort Merceus would have also been tragic, but there weren’t civilians in the fort. Hubert spun the dial and saw the target moving across the map, “Fascinating.”

“Yes you pick the spot you want obliterated, and then you push the button sequence, and ka-blam! Gone,” smiled Crompton.

“Well, I’d love to have a look at that manual when you find it,” said Hubert pleasantly as his eyes squared onto where Shambhala lay on the map.

The whole thing put Hubert into an exceptionally good mood as he returned to work. He stopped in the office kitchenette to get himself some coffee and he could not help but hum. This was their ticket out. He could get Mecie far away, come back, literally bomb the place, and then warp his way out. Voila. No messy battle to plan out, no risking non-Slither lives in this secret two person war. They were going to see the sun again, they were going to breathe fresh air again, and the best part was they were going to do it as a family.

“Vestra, would you be so kind as to settle a little debate Myers and I are having?” Asked Hubert’s least favorite co-worker, Smitter. The two low level engineers had been hired before Hubert but he had quickly been promoted above them. They did not contain their envy well.

Hubert sighed and made his face neutral as he turned with his mug in hand, “It would be my pleasure.”

“We’re wondering how on earth you managed to knock your wife up,” explained Smitter as if that were a perfectly normal thing to be discussing about a co-worker to his face. “See, I figured that she works in the medical department, so maybe there’s a blood experiment involved.”

Hubert felt his brow furrowing, “I assure you it was just old fashion fucking.” He didn’t like describing it that way, but he didn’t want to appear too romantic down here. The word love wasn’t really in the Slither vocabulary with reference to feelings about others. It was perfectly normal to love bloodshed and torture, but it was very strange to love someone else.

Myers nodded, “See that’s what I was saying, it must be because you got your dark seal so young.”

Hubert stared at him, “Explain?”

Myers got a little nervous looking, “Well weren’t you a kid when you got yours? Everyone says that’s why you’re so powerful, because you grew up with it. The rest of us have only had ours for a couple years.”

“I’ve had a seal for fifteen years,” said Hubert quietly. It was no secret that his casting ability was devastating; many dark mages had served in the Imperial forces, and they had seen him on the battlefield. He could drop people with a single spell and go on doing that for hours. No one wanted to duel him, thankfully, and no one wanted to duel Mercedes either. The two of them were considered people that were bad to mess with, although that did not put them above chit-chatty gossip.

Myers whistled, “That has to be it! You got it before you finished growing, so maybe that’s why you’re not sterile.”

Hubert couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with them, or that they were even speculating about the functionality of his balls in the first place. Hubert comforted himself with the mental image of Smitters and Myers getting impaled with the pillars of light he was going to rain down on this hell scape.

***

Mercie did not like Hubert’s plan. “You seriously expect me to just hang out on the surface while you handle all the action?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I would like you to do,” said Hubert in a huff.

Mercie frowned at him, “Why do you always do this?”

“What?”

“You insist on doing everything yourself, all the time,” said Mercie. “I’m your partner, I want revenge too.” It was also incredibly dangerous and she feared that he was going to get himself killed.

She watched as he massaged his head. She could practically feel his headache. Hubert sighed and squeezed her hand, “I know you are an incredibly capable warrior. I would love you to be at my side, but I do not wish to put you at unnecessary risk.”

“I’m pregnant not dying,” snapped Mercie.

She could see him swallow back his words and make a fist. They didn’t really fight that much, but they did argue about strategy all the time. They did not approach problems in the same way at all. Hubert composed himself, “I’m requesting a trip to Enbarr, we leave together, I will warp back here, detonate the pillars, and then I’ll warp back to you and we’ll be on our way.”

“Or we could just launch them now, and warp right away,” suggested Mercedes. The sooner they were free the better. Hubert had submitted his vacation days already but the trip would be weeks away.

“I don’t think you should be warping, at all,” said Hubert sternly. Here he was again with the magic ban. Mercie understood and agreed that using dark magic while pregnant was risky, although surely she had used dark spells when she wasn’t sure if she was pregnant or not. Thankfully she had convinced him that white magic probably didn’t hurt. Which was good, because Hubert needed healing often with how much he tried his own stupid devices on himself.

“Well you could warp me,” started Mercedes.

“I think that would still be too much,” insisted Hubert.

Mercie rolled her eyes. Of course he thought that. He wouldn't even sleep with her he was so afraid of messing something up, which was getting annoying because Mercedes was very hormonal and extra aroused these days, and touching herself was getting harder to maneuver.

They were in bed. They planned everything from this bed. Schemes and dreams, it all happened from here. Mercie pulled Hubert’s instruction manual for the pillars of light away, it was a surprisingly slim read, and tried to entice him to her.

“Stop,” he whispered as her hand settled on his thigh. “I can’t do this.”

“You can, you choose not to,” she whispered. “Please Hubert, it’s been weeks, you’re driving me crazy.”

“I’ll crush you both,” said Hubert with irritation.

“Not if I’m on top of you,” she said as she climbed onto him.

Hubert stared up at her with a mix of desire and defeat. For being Mr. Discipline and Order, he was amazingly easy to coerce once she had figured out his ticks. Mercie teased him with her hips, “Please I’m your wife!” She was not above whining for it, especially when he had been so successful at holding out on her.

“My fake wife,” muttered Hubert as he started to move slightly too. “Sorry, that was hurtful,” he apologized. He was getting a lot better at being less mean, and quicker to retract his words than he had been in the past.

“If you won’t I’ll just have to assume that I’ve gotten too big and you don’t want me anymore,” said Mercedes with a wistful sigh as she rested the back of her hand against her forehead dramatically.

“You know that’s not true,” protested Hubert as his hands traced up her sides. He sighed and sat up, holding her in his lap, “May I suggest a compromise?” She nodded and he shifted her around, “Let me just use my mouth.”

“I won’t be able to see your face,” she contended. Her view was mostly of her expanding self. She liked to see him when they were together, she took great satisfaction in seeing the faces she made him make.

“Some would say that is an improvement,” laughed Hubert as he started pushing up her dress. She bit her lip instead of trying to tell him to stop being so hard on himself. She suspected he enjoyed her reactions to his self-deprecating remarks.

When they’d first gotten together Hubert’s interest, well, _obsession_ was really the only word for it, in cunnilingus had embarrassed Mercedes who didn’t have much experience with it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it, it was that he was just rather intent on doing it often. She had figured out quickly that he got off on pleasuring her, or acts of devotion as he coded it. She also knew from experience that he’d be stiff as a board when he was done with her. Then it would be easy to tease him into her, which he had to have known before going down on her.

When he finally came up for air he was pushing her dress off of her and loosening his shirt as started to march a line of kisses up towards her belly button. His fingers traced the darkening line on her skin that traced down from her navel, “Should we be worried about this?”

“The books say it’s normal,” she said uncertainly. They were experiencing much of this in the literal dark as it were. There were no midwives in Shambhala to ask questions to, and they were relying on Agarthan medical texts. Mercedes had a suspicion that the Agarthans’ interest in reproduction was nothing good, and she decided she didn’t want to know what kind of experiments happened on other floors in the Biology department.

She helped speed him along by taking off his pants because he would just go on continuing to kiss every inch of her for hours given the opportunity. From there he was like putty in her hands as she pushed him down and climbed on top of him. Hubert’s hands came up her back to touch the bottom of the great awful tattoo the Agarthans had given her. They marked everyone they ‘owned’. On Mercedes back, they had given her wings. They mocked her and called her the Angel of Death, which she absolutely hated, when they started to make her into something more like Jeritza had been. To have both a crest and a dark seal was exceedingly rare, and exceedingly deadly. Hubert had gotten his tattoo that dominated his left pectoral when he was just a boy of thirteen. It marked him as a tool, an instrument to be used on the battlefield as needed. Hubert was a weapon just looking for the right person to wield him; Edelgard had swung him around wrecking havoc in the war, and now Mercedes was going to stab him through the heart of the Agarthans.

When he was holding her after they finished he wasn’t a weapon, he was a shield. When he wrapped himself around her, Mercedes felt like none of the Agarthans could touch them. “We need a code name for the baby,” he whispered drowsily in her ear. In school, the fledgling Fodlan spy ring had chosen dark spell names as their handles: Death - Hubert, Banshee - Lysithea, Mire - Felix, and Luna - Dorothea. For Mercedes, Hubert had given her a special one, Valkyrie. He said he didn’t feel like a dark spell captured her quite the way that a battling healer did. She loved it.

“What are you thinking?” Mercedes really hoped he wasn’t about to suggest Miasma.

“Tiny Vestra,” he whispered.

“Very subtle, no one will know what you’re talking about,” she teased.

“I want everyone to know,” he said sleepily.

“How about Emile,” said Mercedes. As Hubert hummed with contentment in her ear, she took it as a yes.


	3. The Plan...needs revising

“In case of emergency, designate a family meeting place to regroup and assess damages or losses.” - advice from _Family Guide to the Dark Path_

Hemia was still looking annoyed with Mercedes. With each passing day that Mercedes was still expecting Hemia was growing more and more unnerved. “You know we don’t offer bereavement leave, I hope you’re not getting too attached to this thing,” hissed Hemia. “I will not be pleased if you must take time off.”

Mercedes tried to focus on her work and not the hot fire that her dark seal was putting off as she contemplated jamming her pipette right through Hemia’s ear and into the foul creature’s brain. She tried to quell her rage; Hubert had his meeting with Thales tomorrow to get final approval to leave. She just had to make it through a few more days of work. She made a small wish that instead of being disintegrated by the initial pillar of light blast Hemia would be trapped beneath rubble and die slowly.

Mercedes took a deep breath and finished adding the powdered dark seal mix to the crest bearing blood in her petri dish. It sizzled and popped in response. The crest was fighting the poison.

Hemia wrinkled her nose, “What crest is that?”

“Lamine,” said Mercedes stiffly. “My brother’s sample, not mine,” she added, lest Hemia think she was doing this particular experiment for her own benefit. She hated using Emile’s blood for experiments, but it was the only Lamine sample in stock.

“He was considerably tolerant of his seal,” mused Hemia. “Maybe you will be having this baby after all. You should know, we don’t have maternity leave or childcare.”

Mercedes had no plans of giving birth in Shambhala. She’d just hit the sixth month mark and she was the hottest topic of office gossip. She knew she was getting quite big; Hubert had started early on marking her growth on the wall of their bedroom, he liked progress that could be discreetly measured, and it was fascinating to look at the sort of horizontal height chart.

Day to day she didn’t feel like things were that different. Every once in a while she would wake up and just feel bigger, or a garment would suddenly no longer fit at all, but to see it on the wall was eye opening. It allowed her to see what everyone else was seeing. Her baby wasn’t dying, he was thriving.

She also suspected that he had inherited Hubert’s ill temper with the way he kicked her all the time now. When she was alone she talked to him often, reassuring him that she knew he was in her and she hadn’t forgotten so he didn’t need to kick her quite so much. She had taken to calling him Emile all the time.

Hubert was still on about their child being a girl. Mercedes firmly disagreed. She mentioned how full of fight the baby was and Hubert had admitted that he had colic as a baby, allegedly abnormally so. Mercedes was not surprised by this at all; she wondered if he had damaged his vocal cords and that’s why his voice was so raspy.

She used to hate his voice in school. She cringed every time he spoke because not only were his words often unpleasant, but he just sounded terrible. Now she had come to love his voice whispering her surprisingly sweet words in the darkness of their room as he held her in bed. Apparently he had also despised her airy and high pitched voice in school. Her voice had gotten a little deeper after the dark seal, but her inflections were still the same.

She distracted herself from Hemia’s awful comments by instead daydreaming about how their friends up on the surface were going to react to this romance that had blossomed between her and Hubert. She hadn’t seen Annette since the war, and they hadn’t been friends in a long time but Mercedes still thought about her often and hoped she was doing well. Annette would be utterly horrified by this relationship. Annie had always found Hubert to be extremely off putting and even written a few terrible jingles about him that would always send them into fits of giggles. Annie had little songs about just about everyone at Garreg Mach, and while most of them were funny or nice, the ones about Hubert were definitely Annie’s meanest.

Bernadetta was going to be terrified. It was no secret that she was scared of Hubert but she had also gotten very skittish around Mercedes during the war. Apparently Ferdinand and Bernadetta had recently had a daughter, and Mercedes idly imagined their children playing together. Ferdinand would probably be very diplomatic about the whole thing, but would likely constantly comment on how his baby was better. He’d be wrong, of course.

Lysithea and Felix knew about the sleeping together part, but not about the child on the way. Felix had gagged comically at Mercedes at the idea of being with Hubert and had commented on how he had always pictured Mercie ending up with Sylvain or maybe Dedue, neither of which was very possible these days. Lysithea had gotten mad at Felix and then said that obviously Mercedes had been the mother of the Blue Lions, and Hubert was the mother of the Black Eagles, so it was the most natural fit there was. When Mercie had asked who the mother of the Golden Deer was, Lysithea groaned and said they were feral children.

Mercie was surprisingly warmed by the sentiment at the moment as she envisioned parenting with Hubert. He was nesting harder than she was and constantly stressed by the idea of not having all the necessary supplies on hand. Hubert had learned to knit to pass time down here, and had started to make just the ugliest blankets and socks possible. His stitches were just fine, but he had no concept of what colors went with each other, and Mercedes had to nod and give him encouraging affirmations so that he wouldn’t get discouraged and give up.

Meanwhile Mercedes was quietly sewing up little items from clothes that no longer fit her. She had made a quite nice wyvern plush that had simply horrified Hubert because wyverns were, in his words, the worst animal. Mercedes had rolled her eyes when he suggested a nice friendly pegasus instead. Mercedes had curtly reminded him that this was for the baby and not him and he’d gotten all flustered and embarrassed and dropped the argument.

Hemia was interrupting Mercedes’ pleasant stream of thoughts again. “Mrs. Vestra, your assistance, please.”

Mercedes stopped what she was doing and neatened up her work space before assisting Hemia in whatever foul task she was doing. “Yes? What do you need?”

“I would like you to cast mire at this sample, I need to record the output,” said Hemia.

Mercedes froze at the idea of using dark magic, “Could I possibly record the output instead?”

Hemia looked at her like she’d just asked to take off all her clothes and dance, “Cast mire now Mrs. Vestra.”

Mercedes swallowed and did as she was told. Mire was a low power spell surely it couldn’t hurt anything that much. Mercedes cast the spell and felt her seal flare as usual. She felt no different than normal and she was sure everything was fine, although the sudden cessation of kicking within her suggested otherwise. Mercedes discreetly tried to massage the side of her belly, and then asked if she could be excused to use the restroom.

She locked the door behind her and desperately tried a healing spell. Most white magic couldn’t be used on oneself but this was technically another person. She was extremely relieved when she felt a slight twitch within her afterward. She apologized quietly for being a terrible mother and felt ill about what she had done.

***

“Vestra, this is an unpleasant surprise,” said Thales calmly as he regarded Hubert standing before him in his office.

“I would like to request leave to go to Enbarr, it’s been almost a year since I’ve last checked in with Emperor Edelgard,” said Hubert. It was a a perfectly routine leave of absence. Their bags were neatly packed, with everything in it’s place, they were ready to go for good.

Thales considered the request, and nodded. He signed the paperwork needed to safely leave Shambhala. “You were recently promoted up to Myson’s level, were you not? I think a trip to Enbarr is warranted as a reward. I would not wish the Emperor to think anything bad has befallen you.”

“With your permission, I’d also like to take my wife,” said Hubert. Mercedes had accompanied him last time he checked in at the capital so this was nothing from the ordinary.

Thales scoffed, “How has your wife been recently? I have heard the most interesting rumor about you two.”

Hubert kept his face very neutral, “She’s taken ill.” Mercedes had told him about the mire incident, and she’d called out sick for the rest of the week.

Thales sighed, “Well there’s no helping it. Bring her to the infirmary, they’ll remove the parasite for you. They might even be able to harvest its crest so this isn’t a complete waste.”

Hubert hadn’t lost control of himself in a long time. He rather prided himself on his ability to restrain the pulsing rage that was always a low-level constant in his heart. His anger was like background noise, always present, but possible to disregard. This he couldn’t ignore. It was too vile, too personal, and too far. Before Hubert could even stop himself his knife was out and slamming up through Thales’ chest.

Hubert stared up in shock at Thales who was staring down at him also in shock (or at least he assumed, Thales didn’t actually have pupils). Despite the knife in where his heart should be, Thales was still alive. Hubert panicked and twisted his serrated Brigid hunting knife as much as he could. Thales was less than amused, “Have you lost your mind?”

He didn’t really give Hubert much time to respond as he started to choke him. He slammed the mage, kicking and fighting, onto his desk. Hubert pulled his knife free and tried sending it into Thales’ neck. It went in deep but other than a disgruntled curse, Thales didn’t seem too deterred.

Hubert’s vision was blurring and he knew he had very little time left. Desperately he plunged his hand up through the ragged path his knife had left and just started grabbing whatever he could get his fingers around. A nice artificial crest stone lay submerged in scar tissue. Hubert clawed and grabbed until finally he pulled something critical to Thales’ functioning. Thales collapsed and slumped onto him.

Hubert gasped for air and pushed himself free. His right arm was covered in a black goo that he supposed was Thales’ liver and blood. He didn’t even have time to catch his breath before the guard outside Thales’ office was coming in to assess the cause of the commotion. Hubert was running on adrenaline as he dove to tackle the Agarthan intern and got him into a choke hold. _Oh fuck_ , he needed his knife. Hubert cast Bolganone right at the intern’s face and then ran to Thales to free his knife. The intern was struggling to put himself out as Hubert raced back and calmly cut off his head.

Hubert’s brain was beating with a stead _Fuck_ as his only internal monologue. He took a deep breath and quietly exited the warded office. Once in the hall he warped to the room he and Mercedes shared.

“Get up,” he said as calmly as he could as he opened their tiny bathroom and started to wash off all the blood.

“What happened to you?” Mercedes’ panicked voice was not helping.

“Pick up your bags, come on, we have to move,” said Hubert urgently as he stripped off his blood and sweat soaked shirt and pulled on the first thing he could find.

Mercedes was holding her backpack and her scythe, and Hubert picked up his bag. He gave her a tight hug and they warped.

It was winter and fresh snow was falling in south Hrym. “Hubert you have to tell me what’s going on,” demanded Mercedes with tears in her eyes.

“I fucked up,” he said softly as he looked back in the direction of Shambhala. “I have to go back, I have to detonate the pillars of light.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed Thales,” said Hubert calmly as he set his bag down. He took a deep breath, gave her a kiss, and whispered, “I love you.” He didn’t say it enough because it was a very foreign phrase on his tongue, but he meant it. “If I don’t come back in an hour, leave without me.”

He didn’t give her a chance to argue as he warped back. He landed in the Tech break room. Smitters and Myers were predictably getting coffee instead of working. He didn’t really give them time to start pointless small talk as he hit them with Dark Spikes. It was overkill, but he really didn’t care for either of them.

The normal blue lighting was a pulsing yellow. That was new. The lights were coded: blue for on and okay, red for off and okay, yellow for lock down. He’d learned about this in orientation but Shambhala hadn’t been in lock down in the entire time he’d been there. Well, fuck. He focused on warping to the pillars of light room but to his chagrin, apparently when lock down was activated, certain rooms were in fact warded, including the poorly guarded pillars of light control room.

Trying to warp into a protected room was a lot like a fly getting caught in molasses if molasses was electrified. His warp was also immediately redirected to a cell. The Agarthans were nothing if not efficient.

“Vestra, nice of you to show up,” said Myson humorlessly. “Thank you for saving us the trouble of hunting you down.”

They took him down to the lowest levels. Here the darkness was overpowering and his Agarthan expendable handlers could see when he could not. Hubert tried to stay as calm as possible, although they’d put his own mage shackles on him and they hurt quite a bit. He cursed himself for being so good at his job as his wrists pulsed in misery. He knew this was but a taste of things to come.

He couldn’t see but he could smell the acid. Hubert braced himself for the familiar sting. He’d been tortured with acid once before; he had stood up for Lady Edelgard against their Slither teachers when they were young teenagers being trained. They had dripped acid along the length of his back in precise intervals down his spine. It had left little scars where the skin had burned away and tortured the nerves. After that, Edelgard had begged him not to open his mouth again.

They took off his tattoo first. For Hubert this was total darkness, and the feeling of an Agarthan’s icy fingers clamping his hair to pull back his head. Then the laughter and the rapid pour of the acid right onto the ink. Hubert howled into the darkness knowing that no one he loved could possibly hear him down here in the depths of the earth. When they were satisfied his tattoo was gone, they poured something else on him to neutralize the acid and dropped him to the ground to wait. The passage of time was hard to measure with his breathing being the only sound, and no light at all to focus on.

Hubert swallowed as heard footsteps in the pitch black coming towards him. They bound his arms and pulled them upright. He was forced down to his knees. He felt like he was on the edge of a great void with his arms spread wide as if to embrace his coming death.

He wondered vaguely if they were going to just dump a vat of acid upon his head and end it now. If only to be so lucky. Instead they whipped him first. Then they dripped the acid slowly into the lash marks. He trembled as he realized they were going to do this over and over again until he died. _Fuck_.

The room was warded. There was no warping in or out. Hubert had nothing to look at in the blackness and so he tried to think about Mercedes and wished she was selfish enough to escape on her own.


	4. The Rescue

“When in doubt: save yourself and leave the others.” - passage from _Family Guide to the Dark Path_

The room they’d taken him to was an interrogation room. Hubert knew this was just a pause in the physical torture, because Myson personally liked psychological torture quite a bit. Hubert could see himself in a mirrored window as he waited. He did not look too good even by his own low standards. His tattoo was no more, and in it’s place was a nice craggy patch of skin. If he squinted he could just see the scar from where Lysithea had cut his tattoo in half so many years ago. What a start to a friendship that was, and Hubert sighed because none of the many horrible things he’d found down here were going to help her at all. His back looked quite raw but Hubert didn’t have the energy to care about that because he didn’t really feel optimistic (although did he ever?) about his long term healing prospects. That in its own way was freeing; if he was doomed he might as well cause as much havoc on his way out as possible.

He knew something he suspected that his captors did not. The dark mage shackles they had on him were not perpetually powered. If anyone had bothered to read the careful technical manual Hubert had spent hours writing up, they would know that these things had about three hours of juice. He kept his hands, still in a painful Charley horse because he was a fucking moron for designing these awful things, on his lap beneath the table. The electric flow wasn’t consistent because the dark seal power source was tapping out and needed to be recharged. Hubert had nothing but patience at the moment.

Myson came in with a less expendable looking guard and a mug of coffee. He sat across from Hubert with two folders. “I suppose I should be thanking you,” said Myson as he opened the dossier. “You know, everyone wishes for the untimely demise of their boss, but I must say, to hear Thales was killed by the likes of you, it was quite funny.”

“Ha,” said Hubert emptily. Myson had the page he was looking for and Hubert saw his name at the top.

Myson smirked and shook his head, “Seriously, I’m impressed you got as far as you did. I’ve been reading your file; you were initiated at thirteen as a personal expendable for our asset in the empire. I believe we told your father we’d make you into a dark knight, and that was pretty enticing to him. How’d that work out?”

Hubert just shook his head. He’d failed that exam in school, apparently his lance work was just not good enough in those days. Dark Bishop was a fine alternative and these days his father was too dead to voice any disappointment.

Myson sipped his coffee, “Thales found you really annoying. Crompton loves you, he thinks you're brilliant, but here’s a little secret, Crompton is not the brightest artificial light in the wall. He likes expendables, pities them I think, but at the end of the day you are trained to give your life in service to the cause. No one should love an expendable.” Myson shut the folder. “I’ll send your pieces back to your Emperor, and tell her what a good little boy you were for her. And then we’ll ramp up our plans now that I’m in charge. She doesn’t have much time left does she? If the other little double crester is anything to go by,” he paused to chuckle, “Well your Emperor has maybe five good years left, and maybe five bad ones after that, but probably less. It’s hard to say. The crest of flames is a bit more intense than whatever one we stuck into that little Ordelia runt.”

Hubert stared and swallowed as he contemplated Edelgard dying within ten years. He wished he hadn’t wasted so much time down here. He wished he was in Enbarr, and blissfully ignorant of all these facts he’d learned in this horrible place.

“Crests are a thing of the past thanks to her war. No one chooses whether or not they get a crest, though every blind surface dweller desperately wants one. Agarthan transformation is the way of the future. We choose who is worthy of our power, we make them earn it, and then we reward them. No more gambling with bloodlines and heirs. That is what we will do to determine the successor of the Fodlan throne. We will pick the most worthy, not the most lucky. The little republic idea is cute and all, inspired even, but the monarch will be an Agarthan.”

Hubert appreciated the monologue. He did love drama after all but it was more fun to watch it on a stage than to be on the receiving end of it.

“Now there’s the matter of your wife,” said Myson as he got out the second, much larger folder. “Jeritza’s big sister. And she’s quite big now I’ve heard, thanks to you. Congratulations on your doomed child.”

Hubert felt the shackles weakening as he made a fist to control himself. No more impassioned improvised killings of Agarthans, he had to be smarter. Myson licked his lips and grinned, “My associate heading the biology department, Pittacus, is super interested in keeping her as a sample for an observational study. But our head of military, Chilon, would like to see dear Mercedes really become the Angel of Death to replace her brother. So we negotiated a compromise. We have her blood sample to give to our hunters, they’ll probably have her soon I imagine, because let’s be honest here, how far could she possibly get?”

Myson was staring at Hubert for a reaction. Hubert was pretty exhausted, which helped actually in keeping his face nice and static. Myson harrumphed at the lack of emotion and took a begrudging sip of his coffee. Hubert really wished he was having some coffee right now. “Pittacus will get your wife for as long as she’s pregnant, we’ll harvest the baby, raise it if it survives, which I’m personally not betting on, and then your wife will be given over to Chilon to finally make good on replacing Jeritza as our new death knight.”

Hubert twisted the mage shackles off himself quietly now that they were out of juice. He looked at the guard and the window and wondered how many people were watching this right now. He didn’t have a weapon, he only had his hands and his brain. He had no crest, just an evil dark seal and whole lot of rage. Hubert was going to make the Slithers regret all the valuable training they gave him.

Hubert went for the guard first because he was bigger. Hubert was going to settle for some internal decapitation for this poor drone. He just had to apply enough pressure with a twist and there was a pleasantly pop and the guard was down. Hubert knew Myson was great at magic, but not an especially physical guy. Hubert, ignoring the blinding pain in his back, was quite physical these days because again, Shambhala was boring, it required a great deal of walking around to get anywhere, and he was fucking the death knight’s successor and what a workout that was. When he’d broken Myson’s neck, Hubert paused and finished off the former big boss’ coffee. It was very refreshing.

Something bad was happening in the hall, and Hubert braced himself to go join what sounded like utter chaos. He had some pillars to fire.

***

It was really cold out. If Shambhala had anything going for it, it was the ambient heat. Hubert was not back within the promised hour timeframe. Hubert was not back in an hour and half. He was was not back in two hours. He was not coming back and no pillars of light were raining down from the sky onto her perfect view of Shambhala. Mercie was cold and alone and thinking a lot about destroying the place. A lot of Agarthans were going to die, and that was good, and lot of unpleasant dark mages, also no love lost there, but also some people who didn’t deserve to die. Hubert wasn’t especially worried about other people, he was only focused on the their little family, but Mercedes was very much worried about all those poor souls.

Mercie was thinking about the people snatched from the surface for experiments. Kidnapped children being raised as assassins and expendables. Those people did not deserve to get pillared to death. Mercedes was also thinking a lot about her own father, the real one she’d never met, because he’d died before she was born and how her own child was not going to have a father. She thought about her brother Emile and all the painful things that had been done to him in this place. She thought about the Emile inside her and how she’d have to explain someday how his uncle and father were killed by the same awful, terrible creatures, and how she had done absolutely nothing. He’d be born into a world that was very dangerous for him; even if Mercedes walked away right now, the Agarthans were never going to just let her go.

If she warped her way to someone to get reinforcements and help, she’d lose her baby because there was no way he was going to survive more warping and it was at least ten warps to the nearest friend. He was moving a lot less, and she had a sense that it wasn’t because he was sleeping. If she did nothing and started walking, she’d lose her baby when the hunters came for her. They’d probably take him and make him an expendable just to torture her. That was not acceptable. It was also impossible right now to ignore the painful twitching within her; she knew from her books that false labor could happen and be fine, but Mercedes wasn’t getting her hopes up. The pulsing pain wasn’t too frequent, so maybe it would stop, but maybe it wouldn’t and she would just lose everything anyway for no reason at all.

Someone was warping nearby, and Mercie breathed a short sigh of relief that Hubert was back. Then she saw the purple flash of two, then three more warps. Not Hubert, hunters.

She couldn’t fit in her black armor any more, but she could still wield the Scythe of Sariel. “Well old friend,” she whispered darkly to her weapon. “Shall we kill some Agarthans today?” Mercie cowered away while Mrs. Vestra tightened her grip on the shaft of her weapon. Her seal was burning beneath her skin.

She pitied the poor fools sent to fetch her as she sliced through them. The last one she spared long enough to ask a question, “Where is he?”

“The pit, they took him to the pit,” sputtered the bleeding Agarthan. _Oh wrong answer_ , thought Mercedes grimly as she cut off his head. The fucking pit, what the hell had Hubert gotten himself into? Well, there was no helping it, she was going to have to detonate the pillars herself.

Mercedes started moving because if her training had taught her anything it was that staying still was bad for staying alive. The pit was the bottom of Shambhala. It was completely dark, and opened into a great big abyss. It was completely warded: no warping in or out, no magic period. She was unlikely to be able to save Hubert if he was down there. He was probably already dead. Someone needed to blow this place up and she was the only one here. She had to do this or Emile, if by some miracle he survived, was never going to know any peace and she would not have any peace either knowing that she hadn’t at least tried to do something. So screw Hubert’s plan, she was going to do this her way.

She decided warping anywhere right now was too risky, so she walked to the entrance of Shambhala. The Agarthan Front Gate Guard was known to be one of the biggest cunts in all of Fodlan, and now he had no head. Mercedes whistled as she walked on in.

Crompton liked raising new Argarthans that had just been transformed; he considered them his kids which was sweet in sick sort of way. He’d let it slip to Hubert once that he got those kids from a place called the Nursery. That’s where all the children were kept and trained. Mercedes studied the large map on the wall of the entrance for visitors. She found the ‘you are here’ and then the Nursery, Grid E9 on floor three. Easy enough.

She arrived at the stretch of desolate hall where the lights were pulsing yellow, having only had to slice through like five or six Agarthans. She had never been one to keep a good count like Caspar. She kicked down the door to the Nursery and was greeted by an surprised expendable guard that she wasted no time in cutting in two. She looked into the room, a nice long hall of bunk beds and saw about fifteen kids staring back at her. They ranged in age from about ten to eighteen and on some of them she could see the scars from dark seals implanted under their skin. She suspected they all had them. They did not look especially well cared for.

“Who are you?” asked the oldest looking one, a rather sullen girl that was right to be suspicious of the scythe wielding maniac before her.

“Call me the queen of liberation,” said Mercedes dryly as she looked around the room. “Raise your hand, who knows warp?” All the hands raised, it was the first spell the little assassins were taught.

“Get your watches on, set to midnight,” ordered Mercedes as she saw them racing to change the time of their standard issue slither watches. “In exactly thirty minutes, you need to be warped to the surface or you are going to die. Until then, please feel free to kill as many Agarthans and dark mages — oh but not my husband if you see him, he’s very tall, black hair over one eye — as you wish. Got it?”

“Uh, what are you going to do?”

“Oh, I’m going to go release all the demonic beasts,” said Mercedes pleasantly. She didn’t know how to set off the pillars of light. She was going to try to figure it out of course, but barring that she was going to release every monster she could find and cause as much chaos as possible in the next half hour. The Agarthans wanted her to be an Angel of Death? Sure, Mercedes would be just that.

“Where do we go once we reach the surface?” asked one of the smallest ones. He sounded very scared as he clutched his little throwing knives to his chest.

“Do you know where your parents are?”

“Yeah dead,” one of them said angrily. They all nodded in sad solidarity.

ORPHANS. Ugh, of course these poor kids were all orphans. Mercedes bit her lip, “Get yourselves to a place called Garreg Mach. It’s a school, it’s far away from here, but if you all go together you’ll get there, and you’ll be taken care of.” She paused, “And if I survive this, I’ll meet you there when I can and I’ll help you personally.” She paused feeling overwhelmingly maternal, “Oh it’s cold out there, make sure you bring sweaters and snacks!” The kids raced to comply and Mercedes continued on bloody path of vengeance with a small army of pissed off orphans following her into battle.

***

This was maybe the worst day of his entire life. He thought that often during the war, but today was seriously a top three bad day. His back was searing with pain, luckily not literally though. He had passed a few people that were on fire on his way up the stairs. There were demonic beasts roving the through the accounting department eating people. There were wyverns that had been clearly bred to be extra scary flying around the cafeteria, also eating people. A couple murderous child soldier slaves had looked him over and said, “Oh he’s the husband, don’t kill him,” before moving on to brutally dismember a dark mage attempting to chase down Hubert. He began to sprint to the tech department and pillars of light control room. When he got there the posted guard was holding his own head in his lap.

Hubert opened the door to a very beautiful sight, his lovely wife, covered in blood, a lot of blood, desperately trying to work this stupidly complex machine.

“Mercie!” He shouted as she turned with her scythe. He hugged her and then pushed her out of the way so he could finish the necessary button sequence. She had already primed the map so that Shambhala was the intended target.

“Wait!” she was looking at her watch, “We need two minutes.”

“I don’t know if we have two minutes,” said Hubert as he barred the door. There were definitely Agarthan soldiers in the hall.

“I let a bunch of child assassins loose, I told them they had a half hour to kill as many people as possible,” said Mercedes. “They still have a minute and a half.”

“I’m going to warm up the machine,” said Hubert as he revved up the power level to max. That would kill some time. “Are you, are you okay?”

Mercedes made a soft hesitant sound, “No I’m not, but we will worry about that when we get to the surface.”

Hubert stared at her as she winced. She sighed and pulled up her skirt a bit and Hubert saw that some of the blood covering her was streaming down her legs. “I’ve already done a lot of healing spells, but they’re not helping.”

He hugged her close as he processed her words. She watched the second hand of her watch and then gave him a nod. Hubert slapped the big button and the Pillars of Light began to launch. He took her hand and led her into the chaotic hall before warping to the surface. They retreated to their safe place in the trees to watch the light rain down on Shambhala, and sink the doomed Agarthan headquarters into the ground.

Mercedes didn’t speak as she did her healing spells on Hubert’s torn up back. She was having steady contractions and they both knew this was it, this wasn’t a false alarm. This was happening too soon and with no way to stop it. Just like the Agarthans could not anticipate or stop the devastating assault Mercie and Hubert had just unleashed on them, the poor parents had no choice but to welcome their baby into the world without warning just like all the evil dark mages had repeatedly insisted would happen.

They had thought they were going to beat the odds, but they had just been playing with borrowed time. Power came with a price; the dark seals inside them gave them strength but extracted a cost they had never expected to pay. Maybe if they hadn’t blown up Shambhala like this they might have been spared a few more weeks or months of hope, but they had decided to put a common good above their own personal good. Their brave plan to destroy the Agarthans had ended up destroying a little bit of themselves in the process. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :[ 
> 
> Very inspired by cabin in the woods here for Mercie's reign of terror


	5. The Aftermath

They named her Emilie, and she was born too small. Her mother held her while her father hung onto them both. They held her as her too fragile lungs struggled with the winter air. They kept holding her long after her last breath was drawn. 

***

Finally Hubert couldn’t stand it any longer, and he begged to bury her. Mercedes looked up at him in horror, “Just here, in the middle of nowhere?”

Hubert looked around the clearing. Yes, this was a terrible place off the map and near an evil burning crater. This was no place to bury their daughter, but he had no way to transport her little body that wouldn’t just bring them continued suffering. “This place is somewhere to us. And you’ll carry her in your heart, always.” 

Mercedes broke down and consented. Hubert nestled their too small daughter, cold now, in his arm and walked from the clearing in search of a peaceful place. When he finally found a good spot he tried to dig with a spell fired at the ground, but found it stubbornly frozen solid. Hubert looked up at the sky and resisted the compulsion to curse Sothis’ name. 

He held Emilie in one hand and whispered a prayer to her instead, “I’m sorry. Sorry you were born here, sorry you were born too soon, and sorry that love isn’t a cure all.” Hubert tried to think of something good to say, “We wanted to be good parents to you, but we also wanted to make a world that was safe for you, and unfortunately those two things were at odds with each other.” He swallowed and felt his throat getting tight and his nose starting to get wet. “I’m sorry you had to be a sacrifice for a war that wasn’t yours.” He kissed her tiny forehead wishing that this were a fairytale and she would wake up, but babies born after only sixth months in the womb into the freezing cold of the woods didn’t get happily ever afters. 

In the end he had to burn her because the ground would not budge. Afterward he piled up stones over the ashes and decided he would never go into the details of this with Mercedes. 

In the time he had been gone, Mercedes had been forced to deliver her after birth alone. She stared at their campfire with her knees up and her arms wrapped around her legs. Hubert sat beside her and also watched the flames eating up the items they had made in anticipation of the birth: the little clothes, the knit socks, the stuffed wyvern. 

He was all out of words right now and there was nothing that could be said to make any of this right.

“I want you to take my dark seal out,” whispered Mercedes. 

Hubert stared at her and then shook his head no, “It’s too deep.” 

“I don’t care, I want it out,” cried Mercedes. 

“That could kill you,” whispered Hubert. It had killed her brother. 

Mercedes was still crying, “Well I can’t live with it in me any longer, so either you take it out or I try to.” 

Hubert was silent as he rubbed his face. “I’ll do it, but not out here. Please let me wait until we get to the Ordelia’s.” 

“Fine,” she whispered. 

He pulled the blanket around them both. Neither of them got a moment of sleep that night. 

In the morning the struggled through the warp journey together all the way to the Ordelia estate. 

***

Linhardt assisted in removing the dark seal from Mercedes’ body. He kept Mercie under while Hubert, under Lysithea’s watchful guidance, made the careful cuts and pulled the horrible thing free. Then Linhardt bathed the area in warm white magic, repaired the muscle, rejoined the skin, and the easy part was done. 

The withdraw began immediately and was unforgiving. Mercedes had only had her dark seal for a little over five years, and she feared what she would have felt like if it had been in even a moment longer. Hubert held her as she experienced chills, sweats, and tremors. They spent a great deal of time sitting together silently in the sun sucking in fresh air as the withdraw continued. As bad as it was Mercedes stayed strong, and she pulled through. 

A great darkness had lifted from her heart. Everything that had happened was still a raw pain within her, but the removal of the dark seal was helping her to cope. She wasn’t back to the person she had once been, but she felt just a little bit good after a long time of feeling very bad. Mercedes’ dark seal was gone and with it went the tender warm feeling deep within her when she was close to Hubert, who still had shadows hanging over him. They weren’t two spies clinging to each other deep in the earth anymore, and their safe little bed was long obliterated. The mission was over, and so was their partnership. 

***

Lysithea passed Hubert a pair of tinted glasses with pleasant round lenses. She had declared them to be called sun glasses. If Hubert had invented them he would have called them shades, because they made everything nice and shadowy. They made the world a lot easier to look at. Lysithea was very had to look at right now. What was left of her hair was hidden up in a purple knit hat. Her body shook a lot, and she had lost her sense of taste so she couldn’t even enjoy her favorite foods anymore. 

“Keep them, take extras, I made way too many,” sighed Lysithea. “Something to remember me by.” 

Hubert dryly pointed to his chest, “I’ll carry the memory of you with me wherever I go.” 

“Oh my, Hubie, that might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” started Lysithea.

“I’m talking about the scar you left when you cut my tattoo in half,” said Hubert correcting her, although she would also be permanently in his heart. When the Slithers had burned the tattoo off of him with acid, and the scar had become twisted up too. 

Lysithea burst out laughing, although it sounded a little painful to laugh so hard, “Thanks for not being too precious about things. Everyone’s dancing around like their going to step on eggshells if they acknowledge I’m not going to make it.” 

“I’m sorry this is happening,” said Hubert softly. “I’m sorry we didn’t find anything useful.” 

“Well, thanks for obliterating Shambhala before I die, that was a pretty good gift,” said Lysithea. 

The pair of dark mages sat side by side in lawn chairs in the noon sun even though it was pretty cold out. They chatted about old times, which now felt a lifetime ago. They chatted about the good and the bad things they’d done, and didn’t give much thought to the future. 

Lysithea pulled her blanket around herself tightly, “I wish it was summer.” Hubert did too. He wanted to be warm again, he wanted to stop being sick, and he wanted to breathe in as much fresh air as he could. 

After a long silence as they let the sun wash over them Lysithea finally asked, “What happened in Shambhala?”

Hubert didn’t answer. Lysithea had seen his back; he didn’t need to tell her he’d been tortured. She knew Mercedes was willing to risk dying just to get her dark seal out. Finally most of all Lysithea had heard them, or rather not heard them. Hubert and Mercedes weren’t speaking, not to each other, and barely to anyone else. 

“Shambhala is destroyed, and everything that happened there is done,” whispered Hubert finally. He knew there were still Agarthans and affiliated dark mages peppered across Fodlan. He was going to find them all and route them out one by one, even if it took the rest of his life. His dark seal felt red hot whenever he thought about them, and he’d learned over and over that a man could be carried quite far on the wings of revenge alone. 

In destroying Shambhala they’d also destroyed the one little safe space they’d carved out for each other. The too tiny and uncomfortable bed they’d shared was no more. They were no more. 

Mercedes had given him back the ring he’d given her almost three years ago. The mission was over and now so was their cover. Hubert tried at first to get her to keep it, and then had accepted it on the condition that she take his ring back too, and hold onto it as a reminder of Emilie. Mercedes said she didn’t need or want any more reminders, and so Hubert had stopped suggesting things. He’d put both rings onto a chain so they could sit together buried into his shirt and as close to his heart as they could get. 

He wanted to go back to Enbarr and Edelgard. He understood things there. Mercedes said she was going to Garreg Mach to see if any of those kids she’d set free made it, and then from there, she didn’t know. Hubert told her good luck, and gave her his address in Enbarr if she ever wanted to contact him. He did not expect to hear from her. 

After a while Lysithea said she’d had enough sun and so Hubert carried her back into the house. She showed him all her research and directed him in how to pack it up and load everything onto Linhardt’s wagon. Felix looked distant as they packed up to leave. This was going to be goodbye, a permanent goodbye. 

Linhardt went first, so that he could claim his preferred comfortable seat. Mercedes left next, planning to ride with them until their roads diverged. Without her dark seal, she could only warp other people to safety, and couldn’t warp herself any more. 

Hubert stood across from Lysithea in her chair and Felix beside her. The three of them were an angry bunch that didn’t express themselves well, and this farewell was proving no exception. It didn’t feel real, but the dark circles beneath Lysithea’s eyes and the unstoppable tremor in her hands suggested otherwise. 

“I wasn’t especially happy about it at the time, but thank you both for trying to prove I was the death knight all those years ago,” said Hubert as he stared at the pair. “I’m glad you were so completely wrong about me.”

Lysithea snorted, “Thank you for cramming a lot of interesting experiences into a short amount of time.” 

“Thank you for giving me a place where I felt I belonged,” said Felix, although it wasn’t clear to whom he was speaking, perhaps to both of them. 

Hubert shook Felix’s hand, “Contact me in Enbarr if you need anything, ever.” He knelt and hugged Lysithea for the last time, “If I see you on some other side, I’ll be very surprised and I’m sure we’ll have a lot to discuss.” 

Lysithea smiled weakly, “I’d like that, but I won’t hold my breath.” 

“Good, keep breathing as long as you can,” said Hubert weakly. 

Lysithea groaned and coughed, “Okay, get out of here.” 

***

Lysithea succumbed to her two crests in the summer of ‘89. She had fought and survived for two decades longer than anyone initially expected. She liked sweets and cute things, playing oboe in a minor key, inventing things, and cheating at tabletop games because she was extremely competitive and enjoyed winning at all costs. She was afraid of ghosts and time. She loved her parents and all the weird people she’d adopted into her life to help fill the void of losing all her siblings. 

After Lysithea died Felix left the Ordelia territory for good, never to return. Reported sightings of him popped up from time to time around Fodlan, but he never stayed anywhere long enough to put down roots. Felix had always been someone who couldn’t stop himself from calling out people for what they really were. So he put that skill to use. He’d show up in places where people who were reported to have undergone massive personality changes lived and he’d watch them to determine if they were Agarthans. If he figured out they were, they’d disappear, and then so would he. 

Mercedes returned to Garreg Mach where she found the surviving remnants of the Church of Seiros trying to rebuild a new faith around something real: humans being good to one another because it was right, and not because of any divine mandates. She also found a bunch of angry orphans with dark seals they never wanted. So she removed the seals, and took care of the poor kids because she did really want to be a mother, even though things hadn’t quite worked out the way she thought they would. They didn’t have anywhere to go, so she convinced the new church to agree to reopen the school. 

There were no more blue lions, black eagles, or golden deer. Instead the Class of 1189 were sorted into three new houses: the black wyverns, the gray horses, and the white pegasi with just five students each. Upon hearing what she was trying to do, Caspar and Linhardt decided to try their hands at teaching, and came back to Garreg Mach as professors. These kids were already trained as assassins, and they didn’t need to hone any more skills like that. Instead they got to learn math and how to read, they started a theater department, and an orchestra. Over time, more students showed up, and Garreg Mach began to thrive once more.

Eventually Mercedes found the courage to compose a long overdue letter. She sent it off and didn’t expect a response, but a few months later Annie had written her back. They began to send letters often, letting out all the bottled words and feelings they’d stored up since 1180. It would take many more years, and many more letters, before they were ready to reconnect again in person. Once they did, they were never apart again. 

Hubert returned to Enbarr and found that his old position, Minister of the Imperial Household, had been rendered obsolete by Emperor Edelgard’s sweeping policy reforms. So Hubert turned his attention to all the technology he’d stolen from the Agarthans and sorted out what was too dangerous to ever see the light of day from what was useful to everyone. Fodlan got electricity, better plumbing and nicer hospitals. While he tinkered away in the shadows he carefully observed those in Enbarr and quietly removed any Slithers that had managed to worm their way out of the tomb that Shambhala had become.

Enbarr also got many more parks with lots of trees and ponds because Hubert now loathed being trapped inside for very long and needed beautiful quiet places to escape to. He walked through them in all seasons and weather when he needed to get away. He went there when he needed a private place to speak to the dead. Hubert didn’t like physical things like headstones or graveyards; he preferred to carry his losses with him in his heart. 

He told Emperor Edelgard, and her alone, about all the things that he had seen and done in Shambhala. Edelgard said she was sorry he never got his Brigid hunting knife back, but Hubert thought it was a poetic end to the promise he’d made Petra about how he planned to use it. He told Edelgard all the terrible options available for crest removal. He told her about Mercedes’ work on blood, and his work on dark seals and fake crest stones. None of it was going to be very helpful in solving the two crest problem. 

Byleth didn’t accept Edelgard’s decision about not wanting to be cut open and experimented on again in an attempt to stretch out her remaining years. When the Emperor gave Byleth back her ring, the professor returned to Garreg Mach to help with its new mission. No longer able to go back in time, the professor looked forward towards the future and instead of teaching students about how to kill, she taught them how to be alive. 

After a while, Hubert even told Edelgard about the small safe bed and the love he and Mercie had lit up in the darkness of Shambhala. He told her about the beautiful daughter they’d made and how it felt to see her born too soon into a world that wasn’t quite safe enough yet for her to arrive into. He told Edelgard about all the things, wonderful, terrible, and sad, that the pillars of light had destroyed when they rained down on Shambhala. Then he waited for Edelgard to pick her successor and give the word that she was ready to leave the public eye. When that day came, he left Enbarr with her.

Many years later, though not nearly as many as would have hoped for, he returned to Enbarr alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I messed myself up writing this one. 
> 
> So that's a conclusion for Lysithea, Felix, and Mercedes. 
> 
> I have but one more fic left to share, and it was the first one I wrote way back when I decided to pick up creative writing again after really falling in love the black eagles and deciding to try out fanfiction for the first time. 
> 
> What do Hubert, Ferdinand, Berndetta, and Dorothea do in post-Edelgard world? Well, they host an ill-advised class reunion to coincide with a most inaccurate opera chronicling the war. Much fluffier and much smuttier than this terribly sad thing I just wrote, I promise.


End file.
